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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - XI. An American Dilemma - 45. America Again at the Crossroads in the Negro Problem - 2. Social Trends
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1000 An American Dilemma
ideological changes, related to the region’s rapid industrialization, urban-
ization, and labor unionization, stepped up by the Great Depression and
the New Deal, caused political splits in the Southern Democratic party
machines. The splits usually remained latent, but here and there, now and
then, they forced themselves into the open. The “Solid South” seemed
definitely endangered. The poll tax was under fierce attack in all Southern
states, and some had already abolished it.
Meanwhile such things as the rise of the price level since the ’nineties
and the improved educational level of Southern Negroes made the statutory
devices to keep Negroes from the polls—^by property and literacy require-
ments as well as by the poll tax—^less and less effective. Negro disfranchise-
ment came increasingly to depend upon extra-legal and illegal sanctions. We
viewed this situation as extremely unstable for several reasons: the legal
culture of the South was rising; there were no more loopholes left for
legalizing Negro disfranchisement; the Solid South was showing signs of
breaking up; the liberal forces in the North were getting increasingly
exasperated with the South; and the Supreme Court was starting to enforce
the Constitution as it applied to voting in the South. Southern liberals were
standing up, not only against the poll tax, but often also against the one-
party system and the exclusion of Negro voters from the primaries. Even
conservative Southerners were occasionally found to hold the opinion that
sometime in the future the Negro was going to vote in the South. While
the Negro was almost as effectively disfranchised in the South in the years
before the outbreak of the present War as he has ever been, our judgment,
when taking all these changes into account, thus was that his political
position was potentially much stronger and that his gradual enfranchise-
ment was bound to come.
In the North the Negro enjoyed uninfringed his right to vote, and the
steadily continuing migration to the North meant that the Negro vote was
growing.
In the enjoyment of fublic services the Negro was discriminated against
severely in the South in blunt repudiation of the Constitution and the state
laws. But even in this sphere we saw a slow improvement of his status as a
result of the rising legal culture of the region; the pressures from the
Negroes, from public opinion in the North, from the federal courts and
administration as well as from the white Southerners’ own better conscience.
It was becoming somewhat less unusual that a playground or even a little
park was arranged for Negroes in some cities. The Negro schools were
greatly improved even if they usually still remained inferior. Without
question the New Deal was of tremendous importance for the Negro in
respect to the share he received of public services. It is true that the Wash-
ington administration did not dare and, in any case, did not succeed in
stamping out discrimination in relief, agricultural policies, or anything else
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